Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

Is fasting the fountain of youth?

Among the many insults our bodies endure in old age is a weakened immune system which leaves the elderly more susceptible to infection. Chemotherapy patients also face the same predicament due to the immune suppressing effects of their toxic anticancer treatments. While many researchers aim to develop drugs or cell therapies to protect the immune system, a University of Southern California research report this week suggests an effective alternative intervention that’s startlingly straightforward: fasting for 72 hours.

The study published in Cell Stem Cell showed that cycles of prolonged fasting in older mice led to a decrease in white blood cells which in turn set off a regenerative burst of blood stem cells. This restart of the blood stem cells replenished the immune system with new white blood cells. In a pilot Phase 1 clinical trial, cancer patients who fasted 72 hours before receiving chemotherapy maintained normal levels of white blood cells.

A look at the molecular level of the process pointed to a decrease in the levels of a protein called PKA in stem cells during the fasting period. In a university press release carried by Science Daily, the study leader, Valter Longo, explained the significance of this finding:

“PKA is the key gene that needs to shut down in order for these stem cells to switch into regenerative mode. It gives the ‘okay’ for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system. And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting. Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.”

In additional to necessary follow up studies, the team is looking into whether fasting could benefit other organ systems besides the immune system. If the data holds up, it could be that regular fasting or direct targeting of PKA could put us on the road to a much more graceful and healthier aging process.

Faster, cheaper, safer way to use iPS cells

Science, like traffic in any major city, never moves quite as quickly as you would like, but now Japanese researchers are teaming up to develop a faster, and cheaper way of using iPSC’s , pluripotent stem cells that are reprogrammed from adult cells, for transplants.

Part of the beauty of iPSCs is that because those cells came from the patient themselves, there is less risk of rejection. But there are problems with this method. Taking adult cells and turning them into enough cells to treat someone can take a long time. It’s expensive too.

But now researchers at Kyoto University and three other institutions in Japan have announced they are teaming up to change that. They want to create a stockpile of iPSCs that are resistant to immunological rejection, and are ready to be shipped out to researchers.

Having a stockpile of ready-to-use iPSCs on hand means researchers won’t have to wait months to develop their own, so they can speed up their work.

Shinya Yamanaka, who developed the technique to create iPSCs and won the Nobel prize for his efforts, say there’s another advantage with this collaboration. In a news article on Nikkei’s Asian Review he said these cells will have been screened to make sure they don’t carry any potentially cancer-causing mutations.

“We will take all possible measures to look into the safety in each case, and we’ll give the green light once we’ve determined they are sound scientifically. If there is any concern at all, we will put a stop to it.”

Any article that has an opening sentence that says “Cancer stem cells are like zombies” has to be worth reading. And a report in ScienceMag that explains how pre-leukemia white blood cell precursors become leukemia cancer stem cells is definitely worth reading.

The article is about a study in the journal Cell Stem Cell by researchers at UC San Diego. The senior author is Catriona Jamieson:

“In this study, we showed that cancer stem cells co-opt an RNA editing system to clone themselves. What’s more, we found a method to dial it down.”

An enzyme called ADAR1 is known to spur cancer growth by manipulating small pieces of genetic material known as microRNA. Jamieson and her team wanted to track how that was done. They discovered it is a cascade of events, and that once the first step is taken a series of others quickly followed on.

They found that when white blood cells have a genetic mutation that is linked to leukemia, they are prone to inflammation. That inflammation then activates ADAR1, which in turn slows down a segment of microRNA called let-7 resulting in increased cell growth. The end result is that the white blood cells that began this cascade become leukemia stem cells and spread an aggressive and frequently treatment-resistant form of the blood cancer.

Having uncovered how ADAR1 works Jamieson and her team then tried to find a way to stop it. They discovered that by blocking the white blood cells susceptibility to inflammation, they could prevent the cascade from even starting. They also found that by using a compound called 8-Aza they could impede ADAR1’s ability to stimulate cell growth by around 40 percent.

Catriona Jamieson – definitely not a zombie

Jamieson says the findings open up all sorts of possibilities:

“Based on this research, we believe that detecting ADAR1 activity will be important for predicting cancer progression. In addition, inhibiting this enzyme represents a unique therapeutic vulnerability in cancer stem cells with active inflammatory signaling that may respond to pharmacologic inhibitors of inflammation sensitivity or selective ADAR1 inhibitors that are currently being developed.”

This wasn’t a CIRM-funded study but we have supported other projects by Dr. Jamieson that have led to clinical trials.

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Even cells need to take out the trash in order to maintain a healthy clean environment. And scientists are now uncovering the harmful effects when cells instead begin to hoard their garbage.

Cells’ penchant for hoarding proteins may spur the cellular aging process, according to new research. [Labyrinth (1986)]

Aging, on the cellular level is—at its core—the increasing inability for cells to repair themselves over time. As cells begin to break down faster than they can be repaired, the risk of age-related diseases escalates. Cancer, heart disease and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease are some of aging’s most deadly effects.

As a result, scientists have long searched for ways to give our cells a little help and improve our quality of life as we age. For example, recent research has pointed to a connection between fasting (restricting calories) and a longer lifespan, though the molecular mechanisms behind this connection remain somewhat cryptic.

In two studies published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and eLife, Gottschling and colleagues discover that a particular long-lasting protein builds up over time in certain cell types, causing the buildup of a protein hoard that damages the cell beyond repair.

Clearing out the Cobwebs

Some cells, such as those that make up the skin or that reside in the gut, are continually replenished by a stockpile of adult stem cells. But other cells, such as those found in the eye and brain, last for years, decades and—in some cases—our entire lifetimes.

Within and surrounding these long-lived cells are similarly long-lived proteins which help the cell perform essential functions. For example, the lens of the human eye, which helps focus light, is made up of these proteins that arise during embryonic development and last for a lifetime.

“Shortly after you’re born, that’s it, you get no more of that protein and it lives with you the rest of your life,” explained Gottschling.

As a result, if those proteins degrade and die, new ones don’t replace them—the result is the age-related disease called cataracts.

But scientists weren’t exactly sure of the relationship between these dying proteins and the onset of conditions such as cataracts, and other disease related to aging. Did these conditions occur because the proteins were dying? Or rather because the proteins were building up to toxic levels?

So Gottschling and his team set up a series of experiments to find out.

Stashing Trash

They developed a laboratory model by using yeast cells. Interestingly, yeast cells share several key properties with human stem cells, and are often the focus of early-stage research into basic, fundamental concepts of biology.

Like stem cells, yeast cells grow and divide asymmetrically. In other words, a ‘mother’ cell will produce many ‘daughter’ cells, but will itself remain intact. In general, yeast mother cells produce up to 35 daughter cells before dying—which usually takes just a few days.

Here, the research team used a special labeling technique that marked individual proteins that exist within and surrounding these mother cells. These microscopic tracking devices then told researchers how these proteins behaved over the entire lifespan of the mother cell as it aged.

The team found a total of 135 long-lived proteins within the mother cell. But what really surprised them was what they found upon closer examination: all but 21 of these 135 proteins appeared to have no function. They appeared to be trash.

“No one’s ever seen proteins like this before [in aging],” said Nathanial Thayer, a graduate student in the Gottschling Lab and lead author of one of the studies.

Added Gottschling, “With the number of different fragments [in the mother cell], we think they’re going to cause trouble. As the daughter yeast cells grow and split off, somehow mom retains all these protein bits.”

This startling discovery opened up an entirely new set of questions, explained Gottschling.

“It’s not clear whether the mother’s trash keeper function is a selfless act designed to give her daughters the best start possible, or if she’s hanging on to them for another reason.”

Hungry, Hoarding Mother Cells

So Gottschling and his team took a closer look at one of these proteins, known as Pma1.

Recent work by the Gottschling Lab found that cells lose their acidity over time, which itself leads to the deterioration of the cells’ primary energy source. The team hypothesized that Pma1 was somehow intricately tied to corresponding levels of pH (high pH levels indicate an acidic environment, while lower pH levels signify a more basic environment).

In the second study published in eLife, led by Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Kiersten Henderson, the team made several intriguing discoveries about the role of Pma1.

First, they uncovered a key difference between mother and daughter cells: daughter cells are born with no Pma1. As a result, they are far more acidic than their mothers. But when they ramped up Pma1 in the mother cells, the acidity levels in subsequent generations of daughter cells changed accordingly.

“When we boosted levels of the protein, daughter cells were born with Pma1 and became more basic (they had a lower pH), just like their mothers.”

Further examination uncovered the true relationship between Pma1 and these cells. At its most fundamental, Pma1 helps the mother cells eat.

“Pma1 plays a key role in cellular feeding,” said Gottschling. “The protein sits on the surface of cells and helps them take in nutrients from their environment.”

Pma1 gives the mother cell the ability to gorge herself. The more access to food she has, the easier it is for her to produce more daughter cells. By hoarding Pma1, the mother cell can churn out more offspring. Unfortunately, she is also signing her own death certificate—she’s creating a more basic environment that, in the end, proves toxic and contributes to her death.

The hoarding, it turns out, may not all be due to the mother cells’ failure to ‘take out the trash.’ Instead, she wants to keep eating and producing daughters—and hoarding Pma1 allows her to do just that.

“There’s this whole trade off of being able to divide quickly and the negative side is that the individual, the mother, does not get to live as long.”

Together, the results from these two studies provide a huge boost for researchers like Gottschling who are trying to unravel the molecular mysteries of aging. But the process is incredibly intricate, and there will likely be no one simple solution to improving quality of life as we get older.

“The whole issue of aging is so complex that we’re still laying the groundwork of possibilities of how things can go awry,” said Gottschling. “And so we’re still learning what is going on. We’re defining the aging process.”

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New research from California scientists has revealed a startling side effect to prolonged starvation, or fasting.

In the latest issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, scientists from the University of Southern California describe how fasting triggers the human immune system to flush out old, damaged cells and replace them with new ones. This marks the first time that this phenomenon has been directly observed, and has major implications for diseases associated with a declining immune system, including a variety of age-related conditions and cancer chemotherapy.

Scientists have discovered how cycles of prolonged fasting can help flush out damaged immune system cells.

In lab experiments first in animal models, and then followed by a Phase 1 human clinical trial, the research team found that regular cycles of fasting, each lasting two to four days, triggered the immune system to flush out immune cells. Much to the team’s surprise, however, they also found that these fasting cycles also triggered stem cells—which had been dormant—to spring into action and produce a fresh supply.

While initially unexpected, these findings made sense to the team. As corresponding author Dr. Valter Longo explained in today’s news release:

“When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged. What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?”

Scientists have long known that when fasting, your body turns to its reserves for nutrients, using up stores of glucose and fat. At the same time, your body also breaks down white blood cells—the major component of the immune system.

So, Longo and his team mapped precisely how this change takes place. They observed that prolonged fasting also reduced levels of an enzyme called PKA. In a previous study, the team had found a link between reduced PKA levels and increased longevity in simple organisms. Research by other groups also found a connection between PKA and the ability of stem cells to self-renew. In this study, the team further defined that relationship. As Longo continued:

“PKA is the key gene that needs to shut down in order for these stem cells to switch into regenerative mode. And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old…during fasting. Now if you start with a system heavily damaged, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.”

These findings are particularly encouraging with regards to chemotherapy, which has the unfortunate side effect of often damaging the body’s immune system. But if the patient also participates in cycles of fasting, Longo and his team hypothesize that this could help repair their immune system at a much faster pace, improving their quality of life during treatment.

In order to test this hypothesis, the team then turned to the Phase 1 human clinical trial. They instructed patients currently undergoing chemotherapy to fast for a period of 72 hours. The team found that this fasting did protect against at least some of the toxic effects of chemotherapy treatment.

The next steps, says Longo, are to conduct additional experiments in both animal models and clinical trials. But the team is optimistic that these results could apply beyond chemotherapy.

“We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to many different systems and organs, not just the immune system.”